


It's not over

by sciencemyfiction



Series: Story of the Interstellar Star System - B Side [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 6 times people wished they knew where shiro was, Gen, and one time he did too, s3 spoilers ish, set post s2, the order of the characters is the order of the chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-16 02:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11819415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencemyfiction/pseuds/sciencemyfiction
Summary: Following the catastrophic (and moderately successful) battle with Zarkon at the end of Season 2, Team Voltron has to pick up their pieces and figure out what to do after losing one of their members and sustaining heavy damage among the team and their allies.Or, six times people wished they knew where Shiro was, and one time he did too.





	1. Liutzapayyr

Silence.

Heavy, all-encompassing silence, broken only after what feels like eons by staticky breath, a distant, tinny voice (Shiro) screaming back into the echoes of her scream, her name a desperate prayer.

Coran’s got no joke for this scenario, no light-hearted play on words to chase away the fearful demons of dread and sorrow. She’s deathly still, and his eyes are misty. All he can do is hope that Allura is not meant to die like this, not now. Not now, and not yet! She is so cold in his arms and he can feel the tears seeping down his face, hot and sticky, and oh, by the holy beasts of eld and the gods whose spirits died with Altea, please, please don’t let this be her last breath. He has loved her from the moment she was placed into his care like a daughter, and there is no crueler fate in the entire universe and all the space beyond it than to outlive one’s child.

He shifts her position, hands shaking, and touches her cheek. Coran’s ears are still ringing, and he’s so afraid. Allura seems lifeless and gray in the dim flashes of battle that illuminate the bridge through its massive windows. No burns, no physical injury-- no, this is psychic feedback from being connected to the castle when it was struck. The shock alone may have killed her.

Holding his breath, Coran tries to wipe his eyes on his forearm, steeling himself for the worst. If she _has_ died, then--

Then he’ll have to--

Miraculously, she stirs! And with her, light and hope and reason flood back into him, and Coran finishes dashing his tears hastily, blabbering a waterlogged,

“Thank the ancients you’re okay! Oh, princess, you had me worried!”

Her labored breath alarms him, brings back the terrible memories of so many deaths he’s witnessed before, but she smiles, and reaches out to him. He’d trust that smile any day, and squeezes her hand gratefully, even if he can’t quite manage a convincing grin back.

“Don’t worry. It will take more than that to finish _me_.”

“You know sometimes, I think you take after your father too much,” Coran laments, sniffling a bit more noisily than he meant to. Allura starts to get up, and he supports her, until she’s able to stand on her own two feet. Once she’s there, she pats his shoulder gently, and gives him an unrepentant wink.

“Well, you know what they say. Hot tempers melt the quimblux of indecision!”

He laughs, and shakes some of his worry off of himself, trying as hard as he can to take heart.

It’s all a blur from there. Oh, yes, Coran is one of the most capable of mechanics in the universe, but what they need to fix will take time. Slav may be a brilliant man but they’re only two in number, and there is still the matter of the deadly battle raging on outside of the castle.

Coran’s heart is in his throat with fear of what may happen to Allura should another blast come their way. They absolutely must get the shields back online, and the engines to make it possible to flee, should the tide of battle turn. Once he might’ve balked to think that way, but it has been more than ten thousand years since then, and Coran has always done his best to adapt with the situation.

He cannot tell her not to go to Zarkon’s cruiser, he cannot argue with her logic. Kolivan will be with her, and Antok, and that has to be enough for Coran because she does not need his approval and will not wait. But the heart of Altea, the last of her children, goes forth from the castle and all Coran can do is work his hardest, his best, to ensure that everything will be working if-- if she returns.

Working with Slav keeps his mind off of the dangers they face, ironically, because Slav is unable to work without venting some of his own fears and worries aloud.

“There is a point zero-zero-seven-six percent chance that the engines will stall upon repair,” Slav warns, at the same time as he hands Coran the flux capacitor and the two of them begin the tedious process of replacing shorted out fuses with backups stolen from non-essential systems. Later, Coran will have to fix what he can of those that were shorted, then recycle the rest by melting them down into slag and recasting them again.

Just before Coran can install the fourth fuse, Slav interrupts, crawling forward to pull a stray wire away from the edge of the metal panel, where it had electrified the edge and might’ve hurt Coran-- probably not killed him, but certainly slowed him down.

“Thank you,” he says.

Slav has worries enough, and Coran is finding it quite a challenge just to keep his calm in the face of such an uncertain battle. Will the druids and Haggar be too much for Allura to handle? Coran is not certain he could bear the solitude of being the very last Altean alive in the universe. It’s a struggle being one of two. The thought of being the last is unthinkable.

“Arclight spanner?” Slav says, from under the pedestals that channel Allura’s quintessence into the wormhole generator. Coran tosses it to him and he catches it effortlessly, passing the tool up the line of his hands to the pair closest to the problem.

“Well, Slav, how about this battle? Zarkon’s built a-” Coran doesn’t know how to describe it, and humor has ever been his defense mechanism, so he scrunches up his nose, waggling his mustache thoughtfully. “A- a Mega-Zarkon? Of some sort? and Voltron’s been sapped of its quintessence. What are our odds?”

Slav clacks his beak thoughtfully, working fast, thinking faster. His answer comes grim and certain, sweat beading on his brow.

“There are approximately twelve thousand six hundred twelve realities in which one of the paladins will not make it back to the castle.”

“Quiznak! How many are there where they _all_ make it back?”

“Only thirty.”

This isn’t working. Coran keeps hearing Allura’s scream, distorted ever so slightly, and all he can see is her eerily pale, clammy body, cradled close in his hands. No, no. He must stay focused. He mustn’t falter!

“Well, at least there are some that aren’t _totally_ horrible right?”

“There are at least six thousand in which _none_ of the paladins return to the ship, having sacrificed themselves in battle to ensure the destruction of Zarkon and his command ship,” Slav counters, with absolute clarity. Even he, though, seems to realize the enormity of what he’s just suggested, and falls still.

Outside, lights flash and gleam. The druid weapon is not powering up again, and Coran has to believe it is because Allura is succeeding. Voltron punches its sword through the Mega-Zarkon.

Coran replaces the panel he was working on and hastily moves to the next, reconnecting more replacement fuses and splicing together some wires that were melted apart by the shortage.

“Well, which one are we in?”

“Not one of those, I think,” Slav says, but he doesn’t sound sure anymore, and then an explosion rocks them all, corrupted quintessence flashing brilliant purple in a ring as bright as a star’s corona. Coran can feel the energy passing harmlessly through the ship as the explosion expands, diffuse at this extreme distance, but he worries about what it might’ve done to the paladins, to Allura.

“Coran!” Her voice is steady, now, and he takes heart as Slav finishes his work and they try restarting the damaged systems. Success!

“Yes, Princess!”

“Kolivan and I have returned to the castle, I’m coming up to the bridge now. ...Antok didn’t make it.”

“We’ve just finished repairs, Princess, but the Galra command ship is coming back online as well.”

“Then we must quit the battlefield immediately. Please, tell Voltron to come home.”

He nods, even though she can’t see him doing so, and quickly switches channels, relaying the message to the paladins with as much urgency as he can muster.

“I have Allura and Kolivan! We need to go!”

Voltron is no longer united, though, and he can see it now, floating amidst the wreckage of Zarkon’s grand machine. The lions are separate again, and not all of them are moving. He trades a worried look with Slav, feeling a sickening lurch in his gut, and does his best to ignore the evidence of his eyes. Allura returns to the bridge, and Coran gladly gives over the flight controls to her, keeping one ear tipped to listen in on the communications between the paladins. Pidge and Keith are shouting about Shiro, who is apparently unresponsive.  

They’re towing in the black lion, and there’s no time to panic, not now. Slav is very intelligent, yes, and he’s right about most things, but that doesn’t mean Shiro is _dead_. Does it?

“Prepare for jump!” Allura shouts, cutting through the gathering fear in the air. Coran confirms that the lions have all been brought safely into the hangar, and with a surge of energy from her hands, Allura carries them away from their battlefield, battered but victorious.

They mutually agree, unspoken but unanimous, to rush down to the hangar and join the others. The paladins are a little sluggish, clambering free of their lions. Exhaustion weighs them down, and Allura moves to help Pidge keep her feet; Coran offers Hunk a hand to help him jump down more safely. There aren't words, between them, but a single-minded goal, all eyes turning to the black lion as one. He can sense their apprehension, even shares it, but Keith strides forward after a second of hesitation. Then his steps quicken, and then he breaks out into a run. The others are not far behind. 

Coran lingers furthest back, as the paladins swarm the black lion and open her cockpit, hoping against hope that it’s only injuries or unconsciousness that have made Shiro silent to their queries. Slav's earlier words haunt him. Shiro could as easily be dead as wounded, after the battle they've just had. It's not the same kind of terrible grief that threatens whenever he thinks of losing Allura, but Shiro has been a staunch friend and ally since these strange, gentle-hearted humans first stumbled across the Castle of Lions. If he's-- if he's only hurt, that's one thing, but if it's worse than that--

But he’s neither, and none, to the astonishment and confusion of all assembled. He’s simply gone, as though the man himself had never been more than a dream.

Keith stares into the empty cockpit wide-eyed, unable to reconcile what he's seeing; the others seem similarly lost. 

"Shiro...?"

But there is no answer.

Only silence.


	2. Cagüeiro

When he drops into the atmosphere over Taukali, the ice caked on the blue lion evaporates around him with a delicate hiss, streaming prismatic rain in his wake. Lance howls a greeting to the Galra ships below. He whips past the first two, letting them give chase for precious seconds while Pidge slips into place, aims, and fires what he affectionately dubbed the Miracle-Gro ray. They have comm silence between them and the Galra, of course, but Lance imagines comical shouts of surprise as the two ships behind him explode into a mess of choking vines and begin to fall through the sky, no longer a threat. There's an opening now as the ships below their hapless victims swing about, trying not to be chopped in half by projectiles that used to be their allies. Lance swoops in, crunching one ship in Blue's jaws and kicking the other with her hind legs. He laughs, heart pounding hard in his chest, and feels for a moment like he's little more than a raindrop, bearing down on the world below. 

"Go low, Pidge!"

"You got it." 

She zips beneath him, faster than Blue can move, smaller, more agile, and when she's trailing a good ten fighters, Lance pulls up from a nosedive, executing a graceful spin mid-air while Blue fires her ice-breath out on those hapless fighters, fusing them into a massive ice crescent. 

"Catch~!"

Just a little bit, Lance hears a tiny scoff over the comms, but Pidge is all business shortly enough. 

"Eleven o' clock, Lance. You're outnumbered!"

She's right, and laserfire strafes his nose before Lance can come out of his spin to face them head on. The cruisers don't dare to come into the atmosphere, aren't built to handle combat at the same time as re-entry, so that's Team Voltron's advantage. The counterpoint is, Galra cruisers carry upwards of six hundred fighter-drones apiece, and each of them can only take out so many fighters at a time. It's no picnic, and he keeps catching himself seconds before he complains aloud about how much easier this would be if they could just form Voltron. This time, he's in the middle of drawing breath to whine at length about it before his self-control eases the desire to lay into someone for making life so difficult. _That's fine, but let's only lay into our enemies, not our team,_ he chides himself, biting his tongue. 

Better to focus on what his team _can_ do, he figures, than what they  _can't._ Pidge had said on his eleven o'clock; Lance glances that way and spots six fighters. He marks them in his mind, keeping a background viewport on his flank in case any of them try to surround him. Taukali stretches out below, rapidly growing larger, greener, in his viewscreens. The planet is covered in glistening limestone and steaming pools of sulfur-rich waters; it looks a lot prettier than it smells, and its inhabitants are eager for rescue, but less so to offer Team Voltron any assistance. It'd been a weird mission to take up, the cause of a single rebel on a planet full of people who had given up. Almost, they hadn't bothered. 

 _We need allies, not potential future hostages,_ Keith had said, and oh, sure, it was logical but it hadn't sat well with Hunk, and where Hunk stands, Lance is trying to make a habit of standing beside him. (The whole leg thing is a lot easier when he does it habitually anyway, so win-win.) 

 _You can't know for sure whether they'll be allies or not, it's true, but you gotta think about this. What's the surest way to make sure we have trouble making **future** allies? We can't turn them down. Maybe that's what Zarkon, or the Galra would do. But not us. _ Hunk is a pragmatist, maybe just as much as Keith, but he'd smiled and tried to look like it was Keith's idea and not his own. Transparent, but effective.

_All or nothing, huh?_

Keith had sounded almost sad, when he said it, but he agreed to the assault, helping Hunk plan for how to take down the cruiser in orbit while Lance and Pidge were set to handle the ground forces and disable the communications tower there. That has stuck with Lance, lingered on his thoughts, worrying behind the scenes while he works. If Keith is having doubts, Lance reasons, then it's doubly important that Lance remains staunch in his conviction. So sure, one world isn't all that much, in the cosmic scheme of things. Taukali really _is_ just one more peaceful, defenseless world, hopeless without Voltron physically present to shield it. Sometimes Lance worries, too, that they are freeing these peoples in name only, leaving them with so little protection as Voltron moves on to the next settlement and the next. But, and he has to believe this, Hunk is one-hundred-percent right about the message they would send if they suddenly stopped responding to distress beacons. If they only bothered when it was convenient for them, there would soon be no one left willing to trust them to care. So, yeah! Maybe some of these allies are more helpful than others, but they all still count for something. They all still have meaning. So Lance treats every single world-- no matter how podunk or wimpy-- like Earth. 

Would Lance want to free  _Earth,_ if it fell under Galra rule? Hell, it isn't even a question. 

And once he started framing it that way, it became easy to fight: because Lance loves Earth more than just about anything. And that lets him be confident when Keith is unsure, and it balances out the team a little bit, and that makes Lance feel a little bit better about the things he can't control, the things that are bigger than him. Gotta take a win somewhere, right?

" _Lance!_ " There's Pidge again, a little panicky but not very. She's always in a hurry these days. He spots a ship coming up behind her while she's turned his way, and his focus narrows. Just a little bit closer--

"Yeah?"

"Ugh! You gonna flirt with those guys all day or are you gonna maybe _shoot them_?" 

Now, it's time for a show. He feints right, herding the ones that are following him a bit to his center, takes a few shots with his ice canon that he knows will fling wide, pulling their focus in where he wants it. Below Pidge, the bogey she missed moves in to strike, and Lance takes a full three-sixty spin, effortlessly blasting down the fighter on Pidge's shoulder, two of his escort, and tapping the remaining four with the tail laser he'd been distracting them from. Once he's close enough, he lunges forward, and Blue bites down on another fighter, crunches two with her shoulder. 

The last fighter breaks off pursuit to regroup, and Lance and Pidge are in the clear. 

" _Woooooooo~!_ " he yowls, letting himself freefall a bit as a reward. 

"Thanks," Pidge says, somewhere in the space behind him, hovering at her own position. "Ready to smash that tower?"

"You know it, I'll lay down some cover fire for you. Don't worry, we got this."

There! There's that little sound again: Pidge almost laughing. That's a good sound, rare lately. Lance is proud he managed to get half a rise out of her; it buoys him through the rest of the battle, through the three waves of ground drones. Once they've cut through those, actual ground troops-- mostly not Galra, but the officers seem to be, anyway-- swarm up Blue and force Lance to roll around in one of the sulfurous lakes to scatter the clingers-on. The Galra are so pre-occupied with him that they don't even notice Pidge dropping in to Miracle-Gro their tower until it's much, much too late, and then it's a pretty quick battle in the sky to destroy the cruiser and render the Taukali natives free. 

It's the third or fourth they've done this way, worlds liberated with careful teamwork and a bit more stealth than they might've been using before they-- before the fight with Zarkon. Maybe there's not going to be a parade on a world so inhospitable to humans, but it still feels good to Lance, he still wants pictures with a few of the resistance leaders who summoned them. He still thanks them for their support, and he's still the last to return to the Castle of Lions.

Maybe that's a little bit selfish of him, but Lance needs a little bit of good news and celebration to keep his spirits up and the others are...well, maybe not  _dour_ exactly (well, except Keith, who is definitely dour), but down. Lance gets it; he was down too, for the first week or so. Even his best grin had been pretty weak in the wake of their battle, while the four of them were on forced bedrest after nearly dying of having their quintessence sucked out. But staying down won't do them any good and, more importantly, he's pretty sure it's not what Shiro would have wanted. 

That thought, among all the others, hurts a little. Lance cradles it in his heart a moment, looks it over. This is a pain that comes of sorrow, yes, and maybe a little bit of grief, but he feels like there is healing in the murky depths of it. 

So he lets himself feel that one, instead of trying to drown it out. He's got to be as healthy as he can, or he won't be able to keep up his antics to cheer up Hunk and Pidge and the others. And when you lose something it's healthy to be sad about it. 

Lance changes shape as he needs to, attending the debriefing with Allura, Coran and Kolivan, taking point since Pidge, Hunk and Keith all had to rush to work on patching up damage to Hunk's lion. Lance would help if he were any good there, but he lacks the expertise Hunk and Pidge share on mechanical engineering and repair. Keith, Lance is pretty sure, just doesn't want to be in the same room with Allura and Kolivan. But that's fine. Lance can cover this too: from sharpshooter to freedom fighter to helpful lieutenant. He makes sure everywhere he walks he brings good tidings and lucky information as much as he possibly can, leaving no detail out in his report on the action. That's what they need, right now, good news, detailed news. He can deliver. 

"Thank you, Lance," Allura says, as Lance finishes explaining the aerial combat, the damages sustained, the number of ships the Galra lost and how much can be salvaged for use on barren Taukali's surface. 

"What of the comm officers from inside the tower? Did they have any information to share about the latest movements of the main fleet?" 

"Most of them were loyalists and weren't willing to share the information. Uh, some of them--" Lance winces. No good way to spin this, so he glosses it over. "Didn't make it. The readings tell us a lot, though. Based on the chatter between the cruiser and the surface, Taukali's actually pretty isolated. They haven't heard any news from the main fleet in a few months. Probably didn't even know Zarkon was out of the action till we hit the place."

"That is fortunate, but I wonder if perhaps we were not as victorious as we hoped." 

Kolivan, unsurprisingly, remains the least positive person Lance has ever met, and he's met  _Keith._

"There is no way to tell," Allura sighs, not willing to begin the argument again. The two of them have gradually come to accept each other over the last few weeks, but it's still a difficult partnership. Lance can't blame Allura, not really. If it were him in her shoes, he's very certain he'd want nothing to do with the Blade of Marmora, and no number of heroic sacrifices or convenient coincidences could convince him otherwise. 

"It does seem off that nobody seems to  _know_ , though. You know?" 

Allura nods, looking at Lance with gratitude for moving the conversation from their point of contention to the relevant piece of information they need to wrest from their data thus far. 

"I hesitate to make assumptions, but it does seem that the nature of that battle has not been broadcast through the Empire. Whether he was merely wounded or truly slain, the Galra are reluctant to make public news of anything that may show Zarkon in a weakened state--  _that_ much seems to be true."

"Perhaps they're of the opinion that death can't stop a man who's been alive for ten thousand years." Coran is in the process of making minor adjustments and repairs while simultaneously taking notes on the meeting. He's been getting less sleep since the battle with Zarkon, Lance is pretty sure, but overall Coran has been the least affected of them all, still quick with his usual cheer and a joke where ever it might be needed. Lance has modeled more than a little of his approach off of Coran's. 

"You think they may just be waiting to see if he's  _really_ dead?"

The prospect gives Lance a queasy feeling in his stomach, and from the look of it, Allura feels similarly. She regains her composure after a moment, and Lance picks back up where he'd left off. 

"Uh, so the Taukalites are willing to provide water to resupply the Castle's stores. It'll need to be filtered to purify the sulfur, but I'm pretty sure the systems we have in place can handle it without too much trouble. They can't really offer any kind of military support and I really don't think we should ask that of them even if they could. They're gonna need everything they've gained from taking out the Galra to keep what they've got, you know?"

For that, he gains a slight nod from Kolivan, and a smile from Allura. Lance tries to stand a little taller. 

"Thank you for the recommendation, Lance. I think you are right."

"I concur."

"Then we are at an accord. Were there any wounded who might need our assistance, while we're still here? We'll have to land to accept their generous offer, anyway, and the cryopods are available and in top shape."

"I haven't heard of any, but I can fly back down to deliver the offer while I let them know we're accepting theirs."

"Perfect! Thank you again."

She bows to him, and her hair flashes like starlight, her iridescent eyes glinting purple at this angle. Lance bows back, and gulps when he realizes his face is a bit warm. Hopefully Allura doesn't notice. He sees himself out before she can, trying to refocus.

Lance doesn't have time to be a teenager anymore; that shape is useless and scared and small, here. 

He's halfway to the hangar when he hears voices, heated, and breaks into a run, forgetting to be embarrassed about his momentary lapse from Paladin Lance to Just Plain Lance. It's Keith and Pidge, at it again, with Hunk trying and failing to peacemake. It's almost like clockwork, at this point. Lance would ignore it, if he didn't know them both so well-- but if any two members of the team were likely to come to blows over a stupid argument, it's those two. 

Skidding around the corner as he hooks a left up the walkway leading to the hangar, Lance shouts ahead:

" _Hey!_ " 

No dice-- he's not close enough yet to be heard clearly, and Pidge is in the middle of shouting at the top of her lungs. Something about taking stupid risks just like  _Shiro_ and ohhh, man. That's not gonna be a good one. Lance sees it happening in slow motion ahead of him, even as he bears down harder, trying to run fast enough to slip between Keith and Pidge before they can go any further, here. Keith is too fast, though, and Pidge only barely dodges the reactionary punch coming her way, arms up suddenly to block, her face going red with anger. 

" _Fuck_ you, Keith!" she shouts, and kicks out at him, missing by a mile. Keith is wordlessly angry, fast and light on his feet and so, so much better at fighting in close quarters than Pidge. 

"Apologize  _right now_!" Keith counters, and the next time Pidge kicks, he catches it in both hands and lets her balance slip before he releases her, lets her fall hard on her back and then grinds his teeth, clearly holding back from just leaping on her to continue the fight. Behind them, Hunk is lurching forward, horrified and not sure who he should be protecting from whom. His outreached hand and attempt at calming words are met with a glare from Keith and Pidge cussing profusely and meanly, calling both Hunk and Keith several things in Altean that the translators only pass across as being extremely unflattering and meant as a cruelty. 

Keith's whole body is so tense, he looks like he could snap at any moment. And yeah, Lance made a running joke out of it, a rivalry, but he remembers the rumors when Keith got kicked out of the garrison and _that_ was a pretty serious affair. The final straw had been a fight Keith started. Keith was expelled, of course, but rumor had it the other student, Trujillo, had decided to quit over it. Lance is sure Keith regrets getting into the fight, because he wouldn't be holding back now if he didn't; but that, the person with the temper almost too powerful to control-- that's the one shape Lance can't make himself be. He can be petty, and oh boy, he can be reckless. But he can't hold that kind of mad in him. 

Which incidentally means he's the perfect person for this situation they find themselves in. Not too nice, like Hunk, but not too angry, like Keith. 

Lance kneels down and pinches Pidge's ear with his finger, and both she and Keith are so startled that Keith actually loses all the tension, looking confused. 

Pidge lets out a sharp yowl, and twists around to bite. 

He's Big Sibling Lance now though, and this is the easiest shape to take on, the form that comes most naturally. He can't evade the bite entirely, but it doesn't hurt too bad because she doesn't have enough leverage to snap a finger like he's pretty convinced she would've done otherwise. Then he gets her in a bear hug and says sharply, 

" _Dude!_ Pidge, come on. This isn't cool."

Pidge breaks his hold easily, clambering to her feet and melodramatically rubbing her back like the fall hurt more than it did. She stamps one foot and rubs at her eyes and starts to cry and grumbles, 

" _Fuck_ you, Keith," sniffling and wiping at her eyes with one hand, the other carefully holding her glasses out of harm's way from the oily smudges of tears. 

Lance sighs, and shakes his head, glancing at Keith with a little shrug. Keith is still looking at him, looking mystified, like Lance just summoned a unicorn out of a hat. 

"I think what Pidge is trying to say and failing very badly at is...don't be a reckless jerk. We're all freaked out about Shiro. Losing you too would be...bad. You know?"

Hunk nods, adding in a soft, no-less-sad-than-Pidge voice, "Yeah, man, we're all worried about him."

It's hard, Lance can tell, hard for Keith to accept that someone cares about him even tangentially. Maybe Shiro's the only person who's ever done that for him before. Just a bit, Lance feels a pang of regret for being so merciless in his rivalry. He doesn't think he's gone too far, and he kinda likes fucking with Keith for the laughs, but it's worth considering. Right now, well, right now's different. Isn't it? So it'd make sense if what Keith needs is a little less rivalry and a little more friendship. 

So Lance ceremoniously and solemnly takes Pidge's hand in one of his, and Keith's in the other, and pulls them together, making them shake on it before he explains what he's doing. They go along, both a little tense, but trusting him. (That's a relief.)

"No more lashing out at Keith 'cause you're worried?"

Pidge wrinkles her nose and twists her lips in such an epic scowl that Lance almost doesn't think she'll agree, but after a minute she sighs and says, 

".... _fine._ "

Now for the hard part, and Lance looks at Keith hesitantly, reaching out to pat his shoulder. It's super awkward, but well. He's trying?

"Probably don't hit your teammates? Unless they really, really deserve it. Or one of us is under mind control. Or if you gotta wake us up suddenly, but don't hit too hard."

Keith looks very torn. Lance can see the warring desires of laughter and stoicism playing out behind Keith's eyes, and knows he's won when Keith's shoulders relax a little, his mouth quirking in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it smile. 

"Yeah. Okay."

Beautiful. Lance loves when a mediation works out, and lets go of them both to let them finish talking it over, edging a few more steps left to Hunk. 

"Sorry about the stuff I said," Pidge grumbles, sounding a little like she doesn't want to apologize. 

"Sorry about trying to hit you," Keith says with feeling. 

Lance leans his head against Hunk's shoulder tiredly. He knows it's eating at all of them, even if Keith's the most vocal.  _Where_ has been turning into  _what_ , in Lance's mind; and he thinks Pidge has realized it too. Maybe, just maybe, Shiro isn't anywhere because he's just  _gone_. Maybe he's not coming back. Maybe what happened doesn't make sense and isn't fair. The thought is depressing but all too possible, he thinks. 

"You okay, Lance?" Hunk says, quiet and gentle, and Lance sighs into Hunk's shoulder, summoning the energy back up from where he'd put it down. At least, at least, he sleeps like a log every night these days, at least he doesn't have trouble getting rested up for battle anymore. 

But Hunk has enough to worry about without Lance sharing that weird duality of resting without dreaming, of sleeping without feeling anything but the pure physical effects of staying Battle Ready Enough. 

So he says, 

"Yeah, just glad that wasn't harder. I gotta go down to the surface, let 'em know we're taking that water deal. How's repairs?"

"Mm, we're making progress. Might go a little smoother now, all things considered. Thanks for that, by the way."

"Think you can keep the peace while I'm gone?"

Hunk snorts, and thank the stars for Hunk, really, because only Hunk still smiles like everything is normal. Everything is so patently turned inside out that acting like it's normal is inherently funny, and Lance appreciates the hell out of it. 

"Are you kiddin'? They start fighting again, I'm just gonna let them work out all that extra energy. Might be good for 'em."

"Ha!"

"Hurry back soon, okay?"

Lance nods, and Hunk pulls him into a big hug. Then it's off to Blue again to suit up and depart. Back to work. Time to take on his next shape.

 

 


End file.
